


Our young elders

by kpdiddy



Series: a GATEway to the void [6]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Feel-good, Fluff, Gen, Short & Sweet, so we're gonna fix it and feel good about it, source material includes major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 08:05:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20254900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kpdiddy/pseuds/kpdiddy
Summary: The void does not forget, nor does give up retrieving of what was once part of it. Knight is well aware of this, but he dares not hope the property goes this far... or maybe he does?





	Our young elders

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this story struck me one day and i just couldn't bear to not write it out and share with everyone else. As with the other stories in this series, it's based off an entirely different fic linked in the series description. Though it's a crossover fic, this particular story does not involve crossover elements, thus the single tagged fandom.
> 
> To anyone who's just found this story on its own: while reading the source fic helps with some context and a few otherwise unusual sounding events (and is also heavily recommended on the basis of its quality), all the context needed to understand this story can be found very early on in the fic's first chapter, or just by having a bit of inference based on HK's existing lore.
> 
> With all that said, please do enjoy, and consider checking out the other stories in this fic if you haven't already, comments and criticism are more than welcomed, so please don't be shy!

Knight’s position as a (demi?)god of the void and all that said position entailed was not something he often put much thought into. He more or less took each day as it came, fighting to protect Hallownest in this hostile, foreign new world that he found himself in. Two things that Knight _ did _become aware of regarding the void following his acquisition of the voidheart and the time he later spent in and around the void, was that anything of the void would eventually return to it in the absence of constricting forces (for example, the suits of armor worn by Kingsmoulds), and that being in possession of the voidheart gave Knight a vague subconscious awareness of any conscious part of the void, such as the siblings.

As such, it came as little surprise to Knight to find his elder sibling’s body completely hollow not long after Knight’s rebirth, hanging there in the Black Egg like a molted shell, lacking anything at all inside, as evidenced by taking a look through the gaping chest wound Knight had inadvertently caused upon being reborn from within the Hollow Knight. It wasn’t much of an intellectual leap for Knight to conclude that the Hollow Knight would, at least in a material sense, eventually be back, the siblings that had formed naturally over time were proof enough of that fact. Though Knight dared not hope his sibling would look anything like its former self, much less retain any memories from its former life as a vessel. Life has its ways of surprising you though, no matter what you might believe to be possible or impossible.

Family leave, that’s how Knight would have described his actions that day were he a more eloquent speaker.

The feeling was unmistakable. Knight had gotten into the habit of “spacing out” during his idle moments, directing his awareness less so to his surroundings and more so to the void as a whole. It was during one of these daydream-like losses of focus that Knight became aware of a new presence within the void, a newly formed sibling no doubt. While the occasion was a happy one indeed due to its less than common frequency, the unique feeling Knight got from this particular voidborn was one he had been too afraid to hope he’d ever feel again.

_ The Hollow Knight had returned. _

Knight always kept the dreamgate beacon somewhere central in Hallownest, as a just-in-case insurance policy were he urgently needed back on the homefront for whatever reason. Even so, the near instantaneous travel was still not fast enough for the void’s heart. As he blasted through the tunnels of the rebuilt Hallownest, he reached out to any other siblings he could sense in the Abyss for confirmation of what he had sensed but could not yet see. Rather regrettably, Knight all too soon realized he had never really opened up much about the Hollow Knight to the siblings, and thus was met with a flurry of **_[query: importance, “Hollow Knight”]_** and other similar responses. All Knight could respond with in his rush to verify what he sensed was **_[Request: vacate birthplace, explanation later]_****.**

Eventually reaching the Abyss, Knight hastened to the shore of the void sea where newly formed siblings tended to show up, and found that his request had thankfully been honored (despite a few curious pairs of eyes observing from a respectful distance, as siblings were typically expected to do). 

As Knight expected, he found a singular, rather confused and slightly lonely-looking sibling as he approached. What left Knight in utter disbelief was that the sibling, which due to proximity Knight could now sense with certainty that it was indeed the Hollow Knight on a physical level, was the spitting image of the Pure Vessel when it was younger. Sure it was a bit short, even compared to Knight’s pre-rebirth height, but the horn pattern was utterly unmistakable to Knight.

Sensing the bearer of the voidheart, the small sibling turned and floated over to Knight and regarded him, quizzically at first, then extremely flusteredly when Knight’s emotions overcame him and he suddenly embraced the reformed Hollow Knight. 

Despite how overjoyed Knight was to have his (now technically younger) sibling back, their visible confusion made it quite obvious that reforming had not preserved their memories (or their speech proficiency, Knight was still working on that himself), at least, not in a way that was consciously accessible to them. And so, not breaking the embrace, Knight decided to “open up his heart” so to speak, telling the small sibling all about itself, from the two’s brief shared gaze at the edge of the Abyss, to its bravery in standing against the Radiance for so long, to the journey Knight had gone on to set their sibling free, all the way up to their final act of kindness as Knight threatened to be consumed by his own ascension. 

  
All this was conveyed to the small voidborn in an instant, and Knight could tell by the way their eyes went wide that the void never truly forgot, that with Knight’s help, his <strike> elder</strike> younger (that’ll take some getting used to) sibling was, really, fully, back. The Hollow Knight remembered who it once was all that time ago, and though the newly reformed sibling hadn’t the ability to communicate its joy like its now elder sibling, its utterly ecstatic body language sure came close.


End file.
